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Current Weekly News for Leakey, Camp Wood, Sabinal, Utopia and Surrounding Areas Vol. 4 No. 37
INSIDE
EMS REPORTS
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NEW FACES IN UTOPIA ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT
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LEAKEY FFA
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ............................ Page 2
September 10, 2014
editor@hillcountryherald.net
Large Turnout for TxDoT Public Meeting by Julie Becker
The public meeting held on Tuesday saw a nice crowd of local citizens searching for answers to questions regarding the upcoming construction on Hwy. 83 through downtown Leakey and Ranch Road 337 West. Questions ranged from parking to water flow. Most of the questions regarding parking were driven by the change from slanted parking to parallel parking in the downtown area. Other questions regarding parking were addressed by Marshall Hemp, TxDoT Project Engineer. Hemp said his design plan is based on safety. A large schematic design was avail-
able for citizens to view and seemed to be very helpful getting a visual of the new roadway, curbs, gutters and sidewalks. John DeWitt, P.E. requested input from the audience for any requested changes to the presented plan. DeWitt said the concrete roadway will put TxDoT maintenance forces in a better position. He said with the current plan traffic will remain open on one side of the roadway throughout the project with what he described as minimal complete closures. With bids going out in December 2014, construction
Eagle Red!
could begin as early as March of 2015. Citizens expressed concern regarding the amount of water flow into Tucker Hollow but DeWitt assured them the issue would be addressed. Hemp said there will be sidewalks on 83 across Tucker Hollow with pedestrian hand rails. The best estimated time frame for the project is one (1) year. DeWitt said TxDoT is open to discussion and will do their best to accommodate the requests. The schematic of the proposed project is available for viewing at the local TxDoT office.
submitted by LISD
Cafeteria workers Marty Reed, Tonya Canales, and Becky Odom (Manager) proudly wear their new Eagle Red aprons for spirit days. Interim Superintendent, Dr. Barbara Skipper, presented the workers with the aprons, while recalling that her mother worked for over 20 years in school cafeterias in the San Antonio North East School District, where they would adorn their aprons with school colors on game days. So the tradition continues at Leaky School. Each apron is embroidered with “Leakey ISD Master Cook”. School cafeteria workers begin work very early each school day to ensure quality lunches are ready for students in all
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SCV members honor and remember Civil War ancestors
Tri-Canyon’s Only Weekly Newspaper!
The Spirit of ‘45 Mel Singleton was born on February 1, 1923, in Parsons, Kansas. Mel’s mother died when he was 10 and the State of Kansas sent him to live with his mother’s relatives in Arkansas. It was 1933, times were tough, and money was scarce. When they finally learned his father was in Crystal City, Texas, they wrote to him and asked if he could be sent to Texas. Mel then went to high school in Crystal City, but did not get to graduate. He joined the service at Ft. Sam Houston. At the age of 19, he joined the Army Air Corps. He had basic training first at Shepherd Field near Wichita Falls, TX, where he volunteered to go to Mess Hall school and was taught to be a cook and baker. He put in to be a gunner on a bomber, he didn’t like being a cook. His basic training continued at Squaw Valley, California. At McCord Field in Washington state, he had rifle training. After that he was sent to New York and went on an English ship to England via Scotland. He was attached to the 55th fighter group of the 8th Air Force. His was the 338th fighter squadron. At Colchester, Essex, England, they were picked to cook for the American pilots. He worked every third day and on his time off, he toured London, flew to other bases to visit, and chased English girls. So far, war wasn’t bad. Then they went on to Germany. They took over Caulfuren, an abandoned German base, using landing
grade levels. School lunches are more nutritious than ever as the Leakey ISD participates in the National School Lunch Program, which provides cash and food subsidies for lunches. The food subsidies come from the Department of Agriculture from agricultural surpluses. The current meal pattern increases the availability of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in the school menu. Dr. Skipper said she likes the sliced apples and fresh, baby carrots that are often added to most lunch plates. The National School Lunch Program started in 1946 under President Truman and continues today in over 100,000 schools providing over 30 million lunches each day. Today it also provides free and reduced price lunches to families below the federal poverty line (applications are on the Leakey ISD district website under “Parents and Students”). For more information about school lunches, contact Mrs. Odom in the Leakey School cafeteria or go to: http://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/ NSLPFactSheet.pdf
by Billie Franklin
mats to restore the landing strips. Still a cook, he noticed the stainless steel cookstoves, the finest in their time. At DeKalb, he visited an abandoned concentration camp. The dog pens were still there, everything was empty except the human ashes in barrels, most of them full. Mel got out in November 1945, got his discharge at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He went home to Parsons. His cousins, Howard and Gene Laffon, decided to go to Arkansas and invited him to join them. They went to Yellville, where he went job hunting. He was hired as a fry cook at a local restaurant and that job paid for his room and board. He quit cooking, got on a bus to San Antonio, and went to Crystal City on the train. His dad, sister and husband, lived there. His sister and husband moved to Eastland and Mel went along. He got a job with Coca Cola there and worked a year. He then went back to Arkansas, got a job working on the Bull Shoals Dam, just manual labor. He decided to go back to Eastland and after a few days, got hired again at Coca Cola. He was given a route, a new truck, and after 3 years, due to the Texas drought, got laid off. These were tough times in Texas. He loaded up his car and went to Kansas City, Missouri, where he went to work for Ford Motor Company. Other jobs he held were at General Motors and International Paper Company. He owned a house trailer so he could move to where
the jobs were. At Rock Island, Illinois, he was hired to work at John Deere. Then he went to Peoria, now headquarters for the Caterpillar Tractor Company. He was hired and this he liked, working there for 30 years, retiring in 1985. He and wife Ruth now make their home in Uvalde. He has a tremendous sense of humor, lots of funny stores to tell, and is quite happy about how his life turned out, so far.
VIRUS OUTBREAKS WORRY DISEASE CENTERS By Elaine Padgett Carnegie
INDEX State News .................... Page 2 Legals/Jail Register ...... Page 3 Community News ......... Page 4-6 Feature Story ................. Page 7 Obituaries ...................... Page 8 Classifieds ..................... Page 12
Today’s Weather
High:99° Low: 73° Virus outbreaks Internationally have the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and the WHO (World Health Organization) working overtime! CNN reports a respiratory virus that is sending hundreds of children to hospitals in Missouri and possibly throughout
the Midwest and beyond, officials say. The unusually high number of hospitalizations reported now could be “just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases,” said Mark Pallansch, a virologist and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Viral Diseases. “We’re in the middle of looking into this,” he told CNN on Sunday. “We don’t have all the answers yet.” Ten states have contacted the CDC for assistance in investigating clusters of enterovirus: Colorado, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Kentucky. Enteroviruses, which bring on symptoms like a very intense cold, aren’t unusual. They’re actually common. When you have a bad summer cold, often what you have is an enterovirus, he said. The season often hits its peak in September. The unusual situation now is that there have been so
many hospitalizations. The virus has sent more than 30 children a day to a Kansas City, Missouri, hospital, where about 15% of the youngsters were placed in intensive care, officials said. In a sign of a possible regional outbreak, Colorado, Illinois and Ohio are reporting cases with similar symptoms and are awaiting testing results, according to officials and CNN affiliates in those states. In Kansas City, about 475 children were recently treated at Children’s Mercy Hospital, and at least 60 of them received intensive hospitalization, spokesman Jake Jacobson said. “It’s worse in terms of scope of critically ill children who require intensive care. I would call it unprecedented. I’ve practiced for 30 years in pediatrics, and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” said Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, the hospital’s division director for infectious diseases. “We’ve had to mobilize other providers, doctors, nurses. It’s big,” she said. This particular type of enterovirus -- EV-D68 -- is uncommon but not new. It was identified in the 1960s, and there have been fewer than 100 reported cases since that time. continued page 11